An illegal resolution removes Behshahr from the list of world heritage registration
The story began in July 2020 when the Behshahr municipality requested to expand the city’s boundary in the southeast front to annex the village of Al-Tappeh and the globally registered site of Abbasabad to Behshahr. The pretext for this request was likely better protection and enhancement of tourism services in the Abbasabad garden, an opportunity that was provided for the municipality about two years later and faced much criticism.
In the summer of 2020, in the minutes of the Infrastructure Affairs Working Group of Mazandaran province, the municipality was asked to consult with the Abbasabad World Heritage site regarding the annexation of the Abbasabad garden to the city. The municipality did this and on July 6, 2020, sent a letter to the Director General of World Heritage Sites Affairs at the Ministry of Cultural Heritage.
On April 19, 2021, Farhad Azizi, the Director of World Heritage Sites Affairs, explicitly stated that the annexation of part of the area and the boundary of the Abbasabad World Heritage site to the city’s boundary has no expert or logical justification. Despite this opposition, the Planning and Development Council of Mazandaran province reviewed the comprehensive plan of Behshahr city in a session about a month later and approved it without considering the garden’s area. However, two days later, amidst concerns, Seyfollah Farzaneh, the Director General of Cultural Heritage of Mazandaran province, announced in a letter that the municipality’s request to annex the garden to the city’s boundary was not approved because this request could lead to the destruction of the site and its removal from the World Heritage list.
But astonishingly, three days after this resolution, the council’s secretary, ignoring the opposition of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, approved the city’s boundary including the garden’s area in a suspicious amendment. This action seems strange and probably illegal, raising doubts of a clear administrative violation that should be legally pursued.
The Supreme Council of Urban Planning and Architecture approved this amendment in the summer of 2022, but its announcement happened two years later in December 2024, an announcement that will lead to this site’s removal from the World Heritage list.